Moving Toward Micro

blog-featured-imageIn early 2015, God provided the Church and ministry leaders with a tremendous framework to understand ministry at the local church level.  This framework is found in a book that was produced by Todd Wilson and some of Exponential Conference team.  The free ebook is called “Becoming a Level Five Multiplying Church” that will change the way you look the growth of your church!

The content of Becoming Five is way more involved to unpack in one blog post so let me race us to the big idea.  It is God’s heart that every follower of Jesus, every pastor, and every church be multiplying.

The reality is, most are not.  

That is why Todd wrote the book and Exponential Conference is making a major push right now to challenge churches in the United States and around the world to become a level five multiplying church.

That is why Todd wrote the book and Exponential Conference is making a major push right now to challenge churches in the United States and around the world to become a level five multiplying church.  Todd, Exponential, and HGC firmly believe our best path forward is to embed multiplication into the DNA of our churches that it happens automatically.  That is what becoming five is all about.

There is a long list of reasons why we are not seeing the kind of church multiplication God desires, but at the top of that list is most churches are stuck.  Some are stuck and find themselves in either plateau or decline dreaming of a day when growth was their new normal.  Others are stuck in an addition mode as the church continues to reach people for Christ and impact their community.  Todd contends that about 94% of U.S. churches are stuck in one of these three modes and it is keeping the Church from effectively multiplying.

Describing our current reality is the easy part.  Discerning what to do and then doing it is the real work that needs to be accomplished in the Church these days.

So, what is that work?

It’s not new.  It’s not rocket science.

It is a clear call that is a couple thousand years old.  It is the call of Jesus to “go into all the world and make disciples.”  It is the call for every follower to ensure that a handful of people in their lives are learning and growing in what it means to be a follower of Jesus.  If you consider yourself a follower of Christ then you should be able to point to some people that you are leading to and across the line of faith.  Once they do cross the line of faith the job is only just beginning.  It is then your responsibility to help them grow to become fully devoted followers of Jesus.

This is what the Becoming Five book describes as micro addition and micro multiplication. It is where the real gap exists in most churches today. It is also why the Church has a reproduction and multiplication deficiency. The Church will never fully live into its multiplication calling unless it is happening on the micro level.

Regardless of a church’s current size, I firmly believe revolutionary change will happen in the Church when courageous leaders are willing to embrace a new scorecard and intentionally focus on making and mobilizing biblical disciples.  When this happens, we’ll see churches not only making disciples, but also reproducing and multiplying.

Are you willing to become one of the courageous one?


Beginning November 10th at 1 p.m. ET we are creating a new quarterly HGC network call that will be focused specifically on challenging pastors and church leaders to have the micro multiplication conversation. The main question we’ll be looking to answer is simple—how are you and your church intentionally making biblical disciples?

Micro meet ups are not meant to be small gatherings in a Zoom window; they are meant to include dozens of pastors in a conversation. This call will be more than words of encouragement shared between a group of pastors, it will be a conversation meant to move us and our churches forward on making disciples and multiplying our churches. Micro meet ups are designed to spark an ongoing dialogue about the why and how to’s of making biblical disciples.

It is our firm belief that macro church multiplication will not happen on a widespread and consistent level until discipleship is happening both effectively and exponentially on the local church level.

Can your church be more effective at making biblical disciple? Does a resource gap exits in helping make this a reality?

If your answer to either of these questions is yes then you will want to engage in our new quarterly micro meet ups. I hope you will plan to be on the call November 10th.

Post contributed by Tom Planck, HGC Healthy Church Catalyst.